In Second Opinion, Procter & Gamble agrees to sell its beauty brands to Coty for $13 billion, Thomas H. Lee is in the lead to acquire eBay’s enterprise unit and Tour de France leader Tony Martin is out after collarbone-breaking crash.

Acosta Sales & Marketing is to acquire Anderson Daymon Worldwide, a sales and marketing agency that exclusively serves Costco Wholesale, a multi-billion dollar global retailer with warehouse club operations in eight countries. The transaction is expected to close this month.

Balance Water has closed on a Series A round of financing from Emil Capital Partners, Thomas H. Lee and Hugh Jackman. Jackman, the actor who has appeared in the “X-Men” movies, was an early Angel investor and has re-upped. Balance claims to have no calories and no artificial additives. PRESS RELEASE Balance Water Inc. closed […]

TV ratings firm Nielsen Holdings has launched a follow-on offering that will allow its private-equity backers to sell as much as $760 million worth of shares, according to Reuters‘ publication IFR. The offering will allow private equity backers Blackstone, Carlyle, KKR, Thomas H. Lee, Hellman & Friedman, AlpInvest Partners and Centerview Capital to sell down […]

It looks like Thomas H. Lee and Goldman Sachs are selling some of their MoneyGram International stock.

Today, MoneyGram announced a secondary offering where stockholders–Thomas H. Lee and Goldman– are offering 11.25 million shares. Underwriters on the deal also have an option to buy an additional 1.7 million shares. Morgan Stanley, Goldman and BofA Merrill Lynch are joint bookrunners on the deal.

Thomas H. Lee is only selling about 3.7 million shares in the secondary. The Boston PE firm will see its stake fall to 48.3% (before the greenshoe) from 53.3%, according to a Nov. 14 SEC filing.

The Carlyle Group and Hellman & Friedman’s $3.9 billion agreement to buy Pharmaceutical Product Development Inc. marks the latest example of buyout shops buying companies that run clinical trials for pharma and biotech companies.

These so-called contract research organizations, or CROs, are expected to expand and consolidate, making it highly likely we could see more LBOs. Click through below to see a selection of other noteworthy CROs, presented alphabetically, that could look attractive to sponsors. These include public companies that, like PPD, might find it easier to navigate the market’s consolidation under private ownership; public companies with recent changes at the CEO level; and private equity-owned companies, including one that’s been in its owner’s portfolio for almost four years now.

According to the story, there is still “considerable risk” in the banking sector. Regulators, according to the story, have done little to tackle the problems that both caused and were revealed by the 2008 crisis: excessive leverage, lack of transparency and distortion that created “too big to fail” institutions.

Basically, “too big to fail” has gotten worse. The biggest banks control an even greater portion of U.S. deposits and nothing has been done to make bank holdings more transparent, according to the story.

On Wednesday, shares of Dunkin’ Brands opened at $25. The stock closed at $27.99 on the Nasdaq, an increase of $8.99, or 47.32% above its offer price. Volume was roughly 45.4 million.

Late yesterday, Dunkin’ Brands raised nearly $424 million after selling 22.3 million shares at $19 each (this was up by $1 from the original guidance of $16 to $18 a share). JP Morgan, Barclays Capital and Morgan Stanley are joint book-runners on the deal.

Dunkin’ Brands, which is owned by Bain Capital, the Carlyle Group and Thomas H. Lee, is highly leveraged, with about $1.9 billion in long-term debt. In 2005, the three PE firms acquired the company in a $2.4 billion deal. It’s unclear how much equity the PE firms invested but the buyout shops put in equal amounts. Since 2005, the PE firms have received two dividends, according to SEC filings. In November 2007, the sponsors received $90 million in a payout; another $500 million came in December 2010, according to the filings.

Dunkin’ Brands, which owns Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins, is going public today.

Late yesterday, Dunkin’ Brands raised nearly $424 million after selling 22.3 million shares at $19 each. This was up from the $16 to $18 price range originally planned.

JP Morgan, Barclays Capital and Morgan Stanley are joint bookrunners on the deal. Eleven more underwriters are on the deal, including BofA Merrill Lynch and Goldman Sachs. The underwriters have the option to buy another 3.3 million shares.

Dunkin’ is expected to trade Wednesday under the Nasdaq ticker “DNKN.”

Private equity firm Oaktree Capital Management will invest about $175.5 million into First BanCorp, Reuters said. Oaktree is the second buyout shop to invest in First BanCorp in the past two months. Thomas H Lee Partners agreed to invest $180 million in the Puerto Rico-based bank in May. Oaktree will own a quarter of the bank, once the $425 million preferred shares held by the U.S. Treasury are converted into common stock, Reuters wrote.